Chapter 18
Time In A Bottle
HADES
The intruder, the threat to my family, might as well have taken the axe strapped to her back and chopped me down with it.
Green-and-gold eyes.
I know these eyes. I’ve dreamed of her eyes all my life.
She frowns, her confusion impossible to mistake. “Me?” she asks. “Do you know me?”
Doesn’t she recognize me from that day? True, I was a small child at the time and don’t remember it myself, beyond a memory of her eyes.
That was years ago, so I look much different now, but how could she forget saving me when my grandfather tried to kill me?
He tried to drown me on the beach we can see from here.
I hate coming to this home in the mortal world. It never feels quite…safe…to me.
The woman drops her gaze to where I’ve wound a rope of smoke around her wrist, holding her captive, and her eyes widen. Then she smirks and cocks an eyebrow at me, like she doesn’t fear me. Is she trying to die?
“I see Hades, Mama!” I hear Demeter’s high, excited voice. “Over there.”
Then my mother’s voice follows, sharper. “Demeter. Come back here—” She can’t hide the fear in it. Hasn’t been able to for a long time.
Damn.
I give my captive a hard look. “If you value your life, do not move or speak while I deal with this.”
Giving her no chance to respond, I turn and step partially out of the bushes, drawing the woman behind me so that she’s still hidden by the dense leaves.
She tugs once against my rope just as Demeter runs up with a childishly eager face.
I tighten the smoke binding around the woman in warning and feel her go still.
Still…but I don’t think afraid.
What is wrong with her, to have that kind of reaction to being captured by the god of death? My very touch can send even gods permanently to the Underworld.
“Mama bids you come eat.” Demeter holds out a hand to me while she waves toward the happy family gathering around the basket of food.
I can’t touch my sister. Not without risking my power escaping my control.
I could kill her in an instant—the worst possible result and not worth testing.
Her sweet little smiles will fade away when she finally learns to fear me like Hera and Poseidon already have.
A day I should help come sooner, for Demeter’s protection.
But I can’t make myself hurt her like that. She’ll learn. In the meantime, I’m careful.
I drop to one knee so I’m on Demeter’s level. I’m still tied to my intruder, who doesn’t move or speak, but I feel her watching.
“Remember we can’t touch,” I remind my little sister gently.
My little sister looks at her outstretched hand, then at me, and lowers it with a frown.
“I am not very hungry,” I say.
Demeter bounces on her toes. “But there’s fresh bread.”
Her favorite treat. Already her powers as goddess of the harvest have manifested. Young to get them, like me. But hers don’t kill.
Or make her family look at her like she’s a monster.
“Tell Mama I’m going for a walk.”
Demeter is my kind of stubborn, which has always given me a bit of a soft spot for her. “But Mama said—”
I turn one hand up, still holding on to my rope and captive with the other. In my free palm, I do one of the few things I can control. Smoke and blue fire manifest, then swirl together, re-forming and molding into a tiny sheaf of wheat that is charred on the outside but glitters with inner light.
I place the gift—a bribe, really—on the ground between Demeter and me, and she claps with delight.
“That’s enough of that, now, Hades,” my father calls out as he walks Poseidon, who’s come up from the beach, and Zeus toward where the others are.
His voice is even sharper than Mother’s was. But he also sees more of the things I’ve killed without meaning to than she does. Or used to. I stopped going to him with my failures four years ago, when I was fifteen. He can’t help, and it only adds to the lines of worry around his eyes.
I give him a stare that says I was being careful, and he glances away. I think I’m the only creature alive that can make the King of the Titans look away like that.
Heart as heavy as the center of the Earth, I nod at Demeter to go. She scoops up my little gift and runs off with a laugh.
I take my captive and disappear.
At a whisper of my will, we reappear not far away, just at the other end of our home, on the back side. I face her now, my rope of smoke binding us together and a column of smoke swirling around us, creating the strangest sensation of being entirely alone in the world…just her and me. Together.
I shake off the sensation. The rightness of it.
Connection is not something I allow myself to have with anyone. Even powerful Anubis fears me sometimes when he comes to help me work on my control.
But she didn’t try to run. To escape. To put distance between us. She’s also not mortal. I can see the glimmering of the power marking her as a goddess all around her, like sunlight glinting off ripples in the sea.
I know all the goddesses of the world, and she’s not one I’m familiar with. “What are you?” I demand. “A witch? A fate?”
I will her to obey, to answer.
But she doesn’t. Instead, her lips twitch. I narrow my gaze on that small tell. “Answer me.”
She crosses her arms, seeming uncaring of the rope wrapped around her wrist, dangling between us. “You’re being rude.”
I suck in sharply. Her voice is honey sweet but with a slight rasp to it. The kind of voice that makes people want to listen. But more than that, it’s a familiar sound. Like I’ve heard it before. Did she speak that day on the beach all those years ago? I don’t remember.
“I’m rude? You’re the one hiding in the woods, watching my family,” I point out, voice tight with irritation. Gods and Titans alike cower in my presence and obey my every word without argument. Mostly because they are too terrified of setting me off. But not this woman.
She lifts her hand, tugging at the bond of smoke. “You can lose this. I won’t run.”
She ruins the effect by glancing beyond me, in the direction of where my family is enjoying time together without me. Does she think she’s safer with them? She’d be correct. Then she glances off to her right, shifting nervously on her feet.
Lies. Her words are lies. She’s definitely going to run. Everyone runs from me eventually.
I ball my hands into fists at my sides, gripping the rope tighter. “I thought you were a guardian angel.”
Damn her. I did not mean to say that. Not out loud.
“I’m…not,” she says slowly, like she’s testing each word.
“It was you that day on the beach when I was a child, wasn’t it?”
Her brow furrows in confusion. “I…don’t know.”
Well, that makes no fucking sense. Nothing about her does.
“Are you here to harm me?” Others have tried.
Assassins. The prophecy is known. My grandfather’s death and the following war between Primordials and Titans made sure of that.
No one wants me alive except my parents, and I’ve been aware for years now that even they are second-guessing that choice.
Her frown is all angles. “Of course not.”
The way she says it feels like I’m the odd one for suggesting such a thing. I am not the odd one here. “Did you come to harm my family?”
“I don’t want to harm anyone.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I can’t tell you.”
I slash a hand through the air. “Not good enough.”
“For you and me both,” she snaps. Then she glances away, muttering something under her breath about, “Not like I have a choice.”
She uses such strange words. Gods can understand all creatures and languages, but her phrasing is unusual. Plus all the things she says make no sense. “No choice? Did your feet walk you here without asking the rest of you?”
Amusement sparkles in her smile, and my heart, which I’ve tried so hard to turn into an unfeeling lump inside my chest, pumps. Once. Hard.
I don’t like it. “You need to start explaining—”
“Why don’t they want Demeter coming near you?” she asks out of nowhere.
She might as well have asked why I always dream about her eyes.
I stare into them now, so serious and full of concern and real.
All this time, I’d thought the woman from the beach when I was a child was a conjuring of my imagination.
But she’s not. She’s here, and she needs to be warned to be wary of me.
“I can’t control my power and have killed…
things…that have touched me. They just want to keep Demeter safe. ”
Her brows draw together, green eyes darkening. “And they think you’d kill her?”
“Not on purpose—”
“I saw you with her.” She points off toward where I found her. “You were so careful.”
She noticed?
My heart pumps again. Even harder this time. It…aches. I need to put an end to this. Now. Hand her over to my father and be done.
“Is it always like this?” she demands. “You all alone, and them watching closely?”
Yes. “No.”
Her eyes narrow. “So it is. That’s not right.”
It sinks in that she’s angry. Not with me but with them.
“I don’t need your pity,” I say, yanking the rope. A warning.
She doesn’t take it, chin jutting out. “It’s not pity—”
“Or your advice. My relationship with my family is mine to deal with.” I tug her closer.
I should stop when she’s still a safe distance away, but I’m too fascinated, caught by the fluttering of her pulse in her neck, the slight widening of her eyes, so I reel her in, drawing her nearer.
Gloriously green eyes. I’ve dreamed of an angel with those eyes watching over me, but I’m having anything but an angelic response to her now.
This stirring in my veins is scorching…and treacherous.
Is this the way spiders feel as their prey tiptoes across the trap of their web?
I want to dig into her soul, discover her secrets, hear her confessions, and be the one to dole out her punishments…and rewards.
What kind of feeling is this?
Insidious. Wrong. I’m always wrong—